Microsoft steps on recruitment consultant

A Microsoft plan that involves undercutting the recruitment consultants that feed skills into its sales channel has caused particular alarm for a recruiter that is already operating under the name the software giant had wanted for its own service.

DymanicsCareers.com was alarmed to read on The Register last week about Microsoft's plan to launch its own service called DynamicsCareers. The Microsoft scheme would involve using its own corporate consultant, Norman Broadbent, to recruit sales consultants free of charge for Microsoft Business Partners.

Brett Iredale, managing director of the independent DynamicsCareers.com, said in an email: "We are disappointed that they would do this without at least contacting us to discuss options. It's not as though they don't know who we are - we currently have seven Microsoft offices around the world using the site for their own recruitment."

Dynamics is the brand name for the business software sold through the Microsoft Business Solutions channel. Dynamics is not trade marked.

Paul White, UK business group lead of Microsoft Business Solutions, said Microsoft had thought it might call its free recruitment service DynamicsCareers, but has now decided to drop an 's', settling for DynamicCareers.co.uk.

White said he is planning to launch the Microsoft scheme in August, said he intended to meet with DynamicsCareers and might find a way to work with them.

But he warned, the incumbent was a "classic recruitment consultant" that made its money from fees associated with filling its client's vacancies.

"There's an extent to which we are undermining their business model because they charge and we don't. We will pass partners CVs free of charge," he said.

"There's clearly a challenge there. If it's successful we will do it on an ongoing basis...We are at liberty to drive our business as we see fit," said White.

Iredale said he had a customer base of 500 Microsoft Business Partners to which he distributed over 100 CVs a day.

"It would be ridiculous if we were forced into a competitive situation with the very people we have been helping for the last four years," he said.

Whatever the outcome, it appears both sides will have got some publicity from their spat.®